Teachers’ Perspectives on the Dilemmas of Leadership Education for Middle-School Students: A Grounded-Theory Study

Abstract

This study creates a grounded conceptual framework to comprehend these difficulties by examining instructors’ perceptions on the difficulties of teaching middle school students leadership. The study used a grounded-theory methodology to conduct semi-structured interviews with eighteen teachers. Open, axial, and selective coding were used to examine the interview data. Twelve axial categories, four higher-order dimensions, and 22 fundamental categories were created from the analysis’s 43 original notions. The results show that four interrelated dimensions, mechanism construction, teacher-student perspective, teaching process, and learning content, reflect the challenges of leadership education. These characteristics include curriculum and resource conditions, instructional implementation, teacher and student attitudes and involvement, and institutional and organisational conditions. The four dimensions offer a multidimensional conceptual synthesis of the difficulties teachers see, as opposed to a linear or causal process. Implications for bolstering institutional structures, increasing teacher-student involvement and shared objectives, improving teaching strategies and assessment, and creating suitable curricula and educational materials are suggested based on this paradigm. The paper offers an empirically supported framework for comprehending the structural challenges of middle school leadership education and offers useful recommendations for educational institutions and practitioners looking to enhance its execution and calibre.    Received: 13 May 2026 / Accepted: 12 August 2026 / Published: September  2026